49 Fun Facts About Lesotho

Lesotho, San Marino and which other state are the only countries entirely surrounded by a single neighbour?

Vatican City. It and San Marino both sit inside Italy, while Lesotho, by far the largest of the three, depends on South Africa for every route to the outside world.

What is the capital and largest city of Lesotho?

Maseru. Founded in 1869 on the Caledon River, it sits so hard against the frontier that a bridge at the edge of town is the border crossing into South Africa.

Lesotho is known by which nickname?

Kingdom in the Sky. The name fits: it is the only country lying entirely above 1,000 metres, and in winter its mountains are usually capped with snow.

Lesotho's lowest point lies higher than the summit of which famous mountain?

Ben Nevis. Britain's highest peak stands 1,345 metres above the sea, while Lesotho's lowest ground, a river junction on its border, is at about 1,400.

Which river, South Africa's longest, rises in Lesotho's highlands, where it is called the Senqu?

Orange River. It flows west from Lesotho's high plateau all the way to the Atlantic, while the Tugela rises on the same heights and runs east to the Indian Ocean.

Who founded the Basotho nation in the early 19th century and became Lesotho's first king?

Moshoeshoe I. The name imitates the sound of a razor: he is said to have taken it after a cattle raid that shaved a rival chief clean.

Lesotho's founding king made his stronghold on which sandstone plateau, whose name means "Mountain at Night"?

Thaba Bosiu. His people are said to have reached it after dark in 1824, and he let it be known that the hill grew taller every night to unnerve his enemies.

The missionaries Eugène Casalis and Thomas Arbousset, welcomed by Lesotho's founding king in 1833, came from which country?

France. Sent by a Paris mission society, they became the king's go-betweens with the British, though he never converted to Christianity himself.

Lesotho's first king appealed to which monarch for protection from the Boers, winning it in 1868?

Queen Victoria. With Boer commandos closing in and defeat in sight, the old king asked for British protection, and annexation stopped his country being swallowed by the Boer republic next door.

Basutoland became independent Lesotho just four days after which other British territory gained its freedom?

Botswana. As Bechuanaland it had been run from the same British office as Basutoland, and it became independent on 30 September, so southern Africa gained two new countries in one week.

The Basuto Gun War of 1880–1881 broke out under whose administration of Basutoland?

The Cape Colony. Its attempt to take away the Basotho's guns failed, and it handed the territory back to direct British rule, which is why Lesotho never became part of South Africa.

Lesotho raised its current flag in 2006 to mark the 40th anniversary of what?

Independence from Britain. It was the country's third flag since 1966: the second had been brought in after a military coup, and the new one was meant to show a nation at peace.

Which prime minister of Lesotho refused to hand over power after losing the 1970 election, ruling until 1986?

Leabua Jonathan. With the opposition ahead in the count, he annulled the vote, suspended the constitution and sent the king into exile; it took an army coup to remove him.

Who became King of Lesotho in 1996, having also reigned briefly from 1990 to 1995?

Letsie III. The army put him on the throne when it forced his father into exile in 1990; five years later he stepped down so that his father could return, and in 1996 he was king again.

Which crisis was declared a national disaster in Lesotho in 2000?

HIV/AIDS. The declaration let the government treat the epidemic as more than a health matter and set up one authority to fight it; in 2023 about one adult in five was still living with HIV.

Troops from which regional body were sent into Lesotho in 1998 after riots over a disputed election?

SADC. The Southern African Development Community's own inquiry had found the election sound, but the protests kept growing, and South African-led troops crossed the border to restore order.

Lesotho's prime minister Thomas Thabane stepped down in 2020 after being named a suspect in whose murder?

His ex-wife's. Lipolelo Thabane, from whom he was separated, was shot dead in June 2017, two days before he was sworn in again; police later named both him and his new wife as suspects.

Who was sworn in as Lesotho's prime minister on 28 October 2022?

Sam Matekane. Thought to be the country's richest man, the diamond magnate had founded his party only seven months before the election.

What is the word for a single member of Lesotho's main people?

Mosotho. The language swaps prefixes on one root: Mosotho is one person, Basotho the people, Sesotho their language and Lesotho their land, where they make up almost the whole population.

What black object sits at the centre of Lesotho's blue, white and green flag?

A mokorotlo, the Basotho hat. Every shortlisted design showed the woven straw hat in brown; it was changed to black before the flag was first raised in 2006.

Lesotho's national motto, 'Khotso, Pula, Nala', asks for peace, prosperity and what?

Rain. The same three wishes are woven into the flag, whose white, blue and green bands were explained in parliament as standing for peace, rain and prosperity.

Which item, with special designs for initiation, marriage and motherhood, is Lesotho's national dress?

Blanket. Legend has it that a trader gave the first one to the founding king and his people followed his lead; today every stage of life, from birth to marriage, is marked with one.

Director Ryan Coogler said Lesotho inspired his depiction of which fictional country in a 2018 film?

Basotho blankets became far better known worldwide after Black Panther.

What is the currency of Lesotho?

Loti. It is fixed one-for-one to the South African rand, which is legal tender in Lesotho too, so the two currencies sit side by side in the same till.

The Lesotho Highlands Water Project pipes water mainly to which South African region?

Free State and greater Johannesburg. Tunnels carry the water north to the river system that supplies South Africa's industrial heartland, and the payments and hydropower flow back to Lesotho.

Which 185-metre concrete arch dam was the first built for the Lesotho Highlands Water Project?

Katse Dam. It was sited so high in the mountains that its water runs to South Africa by gravity, through more than 80 km of tunnels that also feed a power station for Lesotho.

Lesotho's Letšeng mine is the world's richest diamond mine measured by what?

Its stones average about US$2,172 per carat, and it produced the giant Lesotho Promise.

Which export to the United States boomed in Lesotho under the American trade law known as AGOA?

Garments. The law let Lesotho's clothing factories sell to American shops duty-free, and the United States became one of the biggest buyers of the country's exports.

Which system of government does Lesotho have?

Constitutional monarchy. The constitution leaves the king no executive or legislative powers, a sharp contrast with nearby Eswatini, one of the world's last absolute monarchies.

Many Basotho men long earned their wages across the border in which industry?

Mining. Pay sent home by men working in South Africa's mines was long a mainstay of Lesotho's economy, but those jobs dwindled from the 1990s as the mines cut back.

Which is the largest single church in Lesotho?

Roman Catholic. The first missionaries, in 1833, were Protestants, yet the Catholics who followed built the biggest single church in a country that is more than 90% Christian.

The 204-metre descent beside Lesotho's Maletsunyane Falls is listed by Guinness as the world's longest commercial what?

Abseil. The falls drop 192 metres in a single leap, and the plume of mist they throw up gave the nearby town its name, Semonkong, the place of smoke.

The spiral-leaved plant that grows wild almost nowhere outside Lesotho's mountains is a species of what?

Aloe. The spiral aloe clings to basalt crevices that lie under snow in winter; plants dug up for gardens usually die, and taking them from the wild is a crime.

Which steep mountain pass, long open only to 4x4s, climbs from KwaZulu-Natal into Lesotho?

Sani Pass. Once a mule track, it was opened up by four-wheel drives after the Second World War and tops out at 2,876 metres, beside what is billed as the highest pub in Africa.

Sehlabathebe National Park in Lesotho is part of which World Heritage Site?

Maloti-Drakensberg. Lesotho has only this one World Heritage Site, and it shares it: the listing joins Sehlabathebe to South Africa's uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park across the border.

Which sturdy animal, bred for Lesotho's mountains, do highland villagers ride where no road reaches?

The pony. Horses reached the Basotho only in the 1820s, yet within a generation the founding king had a mounted army, and many villages are still reached only on horseback.

Lesotho, Eswatini, Namibia and their large neighbour share which currency arrangement?

The Common Monetary Area. It makes the rand legal tender in all four countries, while the three smaller members issue their own money at exactly one-to-one with it.

How did Lesotho's king die in January 1996, a year after his return from exile?

A car crash. His car left a mountain road just a year after his return, and the son who had stepped aside for him had to take the throne a second time.

Lesotho's first Oscar submission, sent in 2020, follows an 80-year-old widow resisting what?

A dam flooding her village. In This Is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection she refuses to leave the graves of her family when the valley is cleared for a reservoir.

In WHO's 2019 estimates, Lesotho had the world's highest age-standardised rate of what?

Suicide. The African region as a whole was only a little above the world average in that series, but Lesotho's rate was several times higher, and the WHO's 2018, 2020 and 2021 estimates put it first as well.

Which British prince set up the charity Sentebale to help vulnerable children in Lesotho?

Prince Harry. He founded it with a prince of Lesotho's royal family after spending part of his gap year in the country; the name means 'forget-me-not', chosen in memory of both men's mothers.

Which animal sits on the shield in Lesotho's national coat of arms?

Crocodile. It is the emblem of the Bakoena, the clan of the ruling dynasty, and it was carried over from the colony's arms when Lesotho became independent.

In 1986 South Africa sealed Lesotho's borders to force out members of which exiled liberation movement?

ANC. Lesotho had given its exiles refuge even though it is entirely surrounded by South Africa, and the blockade helped bring down the government: the army took power that same year.

Which is Lesotho's highest mountain, rising to 3,482 metres?

Thabana Ntlenyana. For all its 3,482 metres, its Sesotho name means 'beautiful little mountain', from thaba, mountain, and ntle, beautiful.

Two-thirds of the seats in Lesotho's Senate are held by which hereditary group?

Principal chiefs. Twenty-two of them sit by birth beside 11 members named by the king, yet the Senate is the weaker house: it cannot start a bill or choose the prime minister.

Lesotho's courts apply customary law, English common law and which other legal tradition?

Roman-Dutch law. It was imported in colonial times and stayed, so Lesotho runs a dual system in which this general law and Basotho custom operate side by side.

Which natural hazard led Lesotho to declare a state of emergency in both 2004 and 2007?

Drought. Little more than a tenth of this mountain country is arable, so failed rains bite fast: in 2004 hundreds of thousands of people needed food aid, and 2007 brought the worst dry spell in 30 years.

What did the 1869 Treaty of Aliwal North cost the Basotho?

Their western lowlands. About half the kingdom, including its most productive farmland beyond the Caledon, went to the Boer republic next door and became known as the Conquered Territory.

Lesotho was the last country in Africa to report a case of which disease?

COVID-19. Lesotho locked down without a single confirmed case, and its first, in May 2020, came a week after restrictions were eased; the samples had to be sent to South Africa for testing.